Zuider Zee Rondje & A'dam

Friday morning. I brave Amsterdam traffic to the parents' hotel--yes, the American Hotel on Leidseplein. The very hotel, by the way, where Mata Hari did her, er, business. It had taken 30 minutes the previous evening to drive from there to my Bussum apartment, so I allowed an hour this morning. It took two. We took off from A'dam, north to the port town of Marken (whence, see my Marken post of last autumn). First appelgebak en koffie, the beginning of my mothers' addiction, as it turns out. We walk around the port and then head north to Enkhuizen.

It was amusing to watch Mater walk along the mundane new harbor, and then turn the corner...
 

...to the old harbor. It may have been at that moment that the parents first shared a real sense of the old Netherlands. (whence, see my Enkhuizen post of last autumn)
 

The Zuiderzeemuseum is worth the trip, partly for its oddness. Not least of which includes a small community that lives as they did 200 years ago, laundering from a well, repairing shoes with hand-fashioned nails...

...keeping small, gentle animals.
 

We were amazed to find that we had seen only about half of just the outdoor half of the museum, and even that took the entire afternoon. Absolutely absorbing.
 

We crossed the Zuider Zee and rounded the bend to Urk, the dark, old, somewhat morbid old island town, now part of the Noordoostpolder. It turned sunny, so it didn't give its usual rather creepy atmosphere (see post that includes visit to Urk). Unexpectedly excellent dinner, and drive back in the dark to Amsterdam.

Saturday, they brave a visit to my micro apartment in Bussum. On the walk from the train station, I pick up my repaired bicycle. I'm not sure where the time went, but we ended up walking in the woods to my favorite park bench on the Gooimeer (which used to be part of the Zuider Zee but now fresh water) near my work, and we had dinner outdoors in Naarden and watch some local idiot kids practice their soccer kicks against the cathedral walls (and occasionally against the stained glass). Then on their own they braved the train system to Amsterdam Centraal and the tram from there to their hotel after dark. They did fine--pretty adventurous for still-jet-lagged, non-Dutch-reading Americans, I thought.

The next day moving around Amsterdam in slow rains. A lot of wasted time in very slow canal boats. Something you have to do, but really hardly worth the time, especially with water running down the windows, blocking most views.

We did make it to the Scheepvaartmuseum--which, Americans, does not translate Sheep Fart Museum, but closer to Seafaring Museum. I let the parents buy lunch on agreement that I get the museum tickets...which then happened to be free for some obscure Dutch-holiday reason. Hey--I didn't know. Really I didn't.
 

Again, the best part of the museum is outdoors, a very large merchant ship, the highest of high-tech in its time.
 

From the high deck of this ship you can examine the riggings and try to figure out how things were done...
 

Spy on museum staff (there to be spied on)...
 

Even look over the side at waterbuses recklessly racing for passengers, through the Oosterdok and Nieuwevaart.
 

A good day, but tiresome from the slow, noisy boats we agreed to use for the day. At dinner it rained hard, and we settled for the same nearby restaurant (Hollandse Pot) we had visited just two days ago. Coffee in their room, and then my very late drive back.